Wagner James Au reports on virtual worlds & VR

Friday, July 29, 2016

Last January I told you that Bryn Oh received a grant from the Canadian government to create a Second Life machinima, so I'm glad to show it to you now. Get comfortable, get popcorn, it's nearly a half hour of beautifully moody, dream-like viewing:

"The Singularity of Kumiko" was funded with a New Media art grant by the Ontario Arts Council, and it's a good thing they helped -- because, Bryn tells me, the most difficult aspect of producing this Second Life machinima wasn't artistic, but financial:

"I think the most difficult practical aspect would have been [SL land] tier," as she puts it. "The story had to be written, then built in the virtual environment, then exhibited for months. I was tempted to say writing the story was hardest, then was thinking of the many months it took in building each model for the story... but really in the end the hardest part is paying for a region for so long as it is being created. I accept that it is a part of working in this medium, but it is still a difficult barrier."

Since it was funded by real life arts organization, will "Kumiko" be shown in an IRL museum or gallery?

Thursday, July 28, 2016

My girlfriend and I recently attended an art show held next to the Hollyhock House, a designated landmark of Los Angeles because it sits on a hill with a panoramic view of the city, and the house itself was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The place was packed, which seemed great at first. But then we gradually realized most of the people there weren't there to see the art, or look at the view, or take in the Mayan-influenced building by America's greatest architect.

Most people were there only to catch goddamn Pokémon.

Which isn't such a bad thing in itself (I was playing too), but what really bothered me is how little attention or interest the players paid to this great landmark. Eyes stuck on their phones, scarce looking up (and then, only to tell friends which Pokémon they just found). On a cultural and moral level, this example is somewhere in the middle on the annoyance spectrum, with the very, very worst example probably being people going to Auschwitzto catch Pokémon.

Rather than just rant, however, I thought there must be ways to encourage GO players to look up from their phones once in awhile and actually take in their surroundings. And then it hit me:

Magic Leap is still super secretive about how its augmented reality technology will work, but there's a fair amount that is public via "talks, patents, job applications and the background of people working at the company to try to find out", as Jono MacDougall explains, proceeding to cobble those clues together to explain how Magic Leap will probably work:

The challenge is pretty straight forward; You create an image with the theme of “Peace” in mind and then you share it in the Flickr group. You can also nominate some of your friends to do the challenge too. I nominate anyone that is reading this right now and wants to do it. I figure it is a good way to express ourselves and distract from all of the chaos and destruction going on in the world on a daily basis. I hope you can also participate.

Moderated by "Goodcross" of Second Life's White Canvas gallery, it's already becoming quite a collection of striking imagery, such as the one above, and the one below, an avatar-based riff on a famous Bansky image.

Strawberry, by the way, has special insights on this call for co-existence as a Muslim-American who found herself the victim of bigoted attacks on social media in the wake of terrorist attacks committed by violent, fringe Salafists:

Now that all party nominees have officially been nominated, here's an updated survey of the US Presidential race. So virtual world fans, who do you want to run the real world? Note the wording: "hope" as opposed to "vote", so non-US readers can take this survey if they like. Also, to prevent ballot stuffing, Google registration is required.

"High Fidelity will protect content by issuing certificates that validate authentic content by providing a proof-of-purchase and link to get your own copy, etc.," Philip writes. "Server operators will have the ability to require all content on their servers to be authentic. As you say, we agree that the most important thing for content creators is to be able to make money selling content if they choose to."

(By "you", he's responding to my point that the ability to reliably earn revenue from what they create is the key requirement for content creators when choosing a platform.) The certificate system he's describing sounds similar to SSL Certificates commonly used on the web today. On the face of it, this is a much stronger form of content protection than the permission system that currently exists in Second Life. In any case, hope to get more details on this from Philip and company soon.

Because every Internet-powered trend inevitably winds up in some form in Second Life:

Created by Mistell Production Film, the answer to your first question is no, this is not actually a version of Pokémon Go that's playable in Second Life, but a fan-made tribute machinima to the augmented reality game/TV show/etc. However, according to one viewer, there is at least one playable Pokémon Go game for SLers currently in production:

Monday, July 25, 2016

Here's the results of our survey last week, asking how many Second Life brand owners are already preparing to launch their brand in Project Sansar, High Fidelity, or another nex gen virtual world. Just under 47% say they've not done so, while 48% say they're preparing the transition in either High Fidelity or Project Sansar or both. Among this group, Linden Lab has the more popular platform thus far, with 19% solely focused on moving to Sansar, versus 8% concentrated only on High Fidelity. However, nearly 1 in 5 are keeping their options open, exploring how to transition to both platforms.

Why the pronounced preference for Sansar? Most likely because Linden Lab has stated they plan to allow some level of content transfer from Second Life to Sansar (without explicitly saying what that entails), allowing for a smoother transition. By contrast, some content creators have raised concerns about High Fidelity's digital rights protection system: